


Flicker

by casastella



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, M/M, Stargazing, Stars, With A Twist, folklore-ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:41:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27262141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/casastella/pseuds/casastella
Summary: [Semishira Week: Day 5]Some called the stars a reckoning, a punishment for humanity's insult to the gods. But how could Semi believe that something so beautiful could be so cruel?
Relationships: Semi Eita/Shirabu Kenjirou
Comments: 1
Kudos: 39
Collections: Semishira Week 2020





	Flicker

There were gods once. A long time ago, when the sea didn’t devour ships and the sun didn’t scorch the earth. When luxious valleys of green rolled across the island and birds perched in thick canopies. When the people were blessed.

Some said the gods abandoned them, insulted by human pride and arrogance, and left something else in their wake to haunt their offenders for eternity, to lay down punishment without mercy. They called them ‘stars’. Some said it was their reckoning.

Semi didn’t believe that. He was a boy when the speckles first appeared in the night sky and he watched in wonder without sleep for three nights until exhaustion took him under on the fourth. Back then, people believed the stars to be a gift from the gods, a guide for voyagers, a story for the whimsical and something to count for little boys with too much time.

The oracle declared it an omen a week before it began, before a family lost their whole flock of sheep to disease. Then another family. Then another. Then a ship went down in a violent storm that brew from nowhere. That was the start.

But Semi was nine then, and matters that concerned adults did not concern him. Instead, his obsessions with the stars grew. He watched one wink. Then another. Then another.

He repeated the next night, and the next. And every night he could sneak out and climb the grassy hill behind his house. He imagined he was in secret conversation with the stars.

A wink.

_Yes, I know._

Wink.

_I stole one of Ma’s cookies today but she doesn’t know yet so don’t tell her, okay?_

Wink.

_Don’t tell the oracle either. He knows Ma._

The years went by and the grassy hill became a dirt mountain. The trees lost their leaves and bark peeled. The birds stopped coming. The livestock died, then people followed. The stars were their damnation, they said. They told Semi to stop looking at them, that he was insulting the gods more.

Semi didn’t think so. For ten years he’d marked dozens of books full of patterns in the ways stars blinked above and the way they moved across the sky. Semi had grown out of sharing his secrets with the sky but he was still communicating with the stars. He knew without doubt even as he struggled to understand their language. It was right here in these very books. He just had to figure this out. Somehow.

Semi glanced back at the village below the hill, barely visible in the dark. There was another funeral today, of a girl two months younger than him. His ma had been taking about Semi marrying her just last spring, before sickness seized her.

Semi turned back to the stars, desperation growing with each night. “I know you can hear me,” he said into the silence. “I have defended you against everyone and now they think _I_ am related to all this. I don’t want to believe that something so beautiful is responsible for so much pain but it’s becoming difficult to tell myself that. So I need you to help me.”

He looked at the open book in his lap, repeating a series of stars. He’d memorised it over the years. He knew exactly what star would blink next, when the cycle would end and start again. He’d studied languages from nearby islands, to see if there were similarities in the patterns the stars made but it had all been a waste of time. These ten long years and he was no closer to…what, he wasn’t sure.

When Semi first began charting the stars at fourteen, he’d done it in hope that he would some sort of answer to solving this. If the problem started with the stars and surely the stars would hold the solutions too. If they did, then they yielded none so far.

“Help me,” he said. He followed the blink of a star and then the next, both in order that he could recount in his sleep. But then it was different. And it was different again.

Semi straightened. He scrambled to flip to a blank page, picking up his charcoal, eyes leaving the sky for only a moment to check whether the page was indeed blank. When he looked up, the twinkling stopped entirely.

“No,” he breathed. “No, please. Do it again.”

Nothing changed.

“Please,” he begged. “Was it something I said?” What had he said? “Help? Is that it?”

The blinking resumed, slower than the last but in the exact same pattern that he caught before.

When the blinking stopped, he repeated, “Help.”

And there it was again, the same succession of stars flickering.

Semi stood, books and paper and charcoal all dropping to the ground. “You’ll help me?”

No response this time.

_Oh._ “ _You_ need help?”

That new pattern again, as if in confirmation.

And it all made sense now, a sense of vindication washing over him. The stars _were_ in trouble as much as humans. This blithe that had fallen on the island wasn’t their fault.

(It would not occur to Semi until later that perhaps they still were responsible for the misfortune, but not as he spent the night on the hill, finally speaking a conversation that was no longer one-sided. For now, it was just a boy and his stars.)

Shirabu had been the last one left on the battlefield amongst deities, life limping within him, barely holding on as a darkness reaching for his heart, his mind. Beside him lay his people, slain in brutal death, all gone as evil triumphed, save for the small flicker of life inside him.

Below was the island and the people he loved. For a terrible moment, Shirabu had feared but not for himself, not for his family now gone. He feared for the people who looked up to them, seeking guidance, health, blessings, happiness. Shirabu could never grant their wishes, not directly. But he had kept evil from falling upon them. And now he had fallen.

_Not yet_ , he thought. _Not now._

He’d stretched himself across the sky in a meshwork of what little life left in him. _Look up_ , he’d thought to the world below. _Look up and don’t lose hope. I’m still here._ He flickered to let them know.

But the damage was already done with the appearance of what they called ‘stars’, unaware of their protector sacrificing his soul to scatter himself over them. They blamed him, as they rightfully should. He’d failed them, after all. They blamed him and feared him and did not look up.

All except one.

The boy was young but his eyes were bright and stubborn. He did not look away.

Shirabu tried to reach out to him the only way he could; by flickering what remained of his soul. _Thank you_ , he said. _Thank you for believing in me. Save your people. Leave the island and brave the seas. It is your only chance._

But the messages were not received well. So Shirabu chose a single one: _Run._

He watched the boy grow older in front him but his eyes stayed bright and stubborn and he did not give up on Shirabu. He sat on that green hill that turned yellow and then brown, ever watching, but never understanding. He talked sometimes. He talked of theories about how travellers from across the sea had plagued the island or how the oracle had lost faith in the gods.

He talked about how he was losing faith too, and that hurt Shirabu so much more. Semi was the only good thing he had seen in these years, the only who had any faith in Shirabu at all. If he lost Semi too, what else did Shirabu have to cling to this little bit of life for? And selfishly, Shirabu was not ready to leave.

So when Semi begged brokenly, “Help me.”

He took that opportunity for himself.

_Help me._

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like my fic quality just decreases with each day...


End file.
